We estimate the relative contribution of recursive preferences versus adaptive learning in accounting for the tail thickness of price–dividends/rents ratios. We find that both of these sources of volatility account for volatility in liquid (stocks) but not illiquid (housing) assets.

We axiomatize decreasing impatience (DI) in a discrete-time setting, as originally discussed by Prelec, and formulate a class of recursively-defined discounting functions that conform to DI. The recursive formulation is used to analyze the Ramsey growth problem using dynamic programming techniques.